The real yoga

Supersoul Farm is a yoga school in Upstate New York. Its orientation seems to be a combination of "real" yoga and bhakti yoga centered on Krishna. The members presumably belong to the ISKCON, but have more fun on their podcasts! Apart from the usual readings from Shrimad Bhagavatam (the main Puranic scripture used by ISKCON), Raghunath and Kaustubha - the two devotees responsible for the podcast - also dive into Ralph Waldo Emerson and even Herman Hesse´s "Siddharta" (that´s a novel, boys). 

On the episode linked above, they interview Edwin Bryant, a scholar of religion who also happens to be a Vaishnava devotee. Raghunath is so impressed by Bryant´s discourse that he says he wants to live in the scholar´s house and take out his garbage, just to catch a few glimpses of the man´s enormous wisdom. I admit I was a bit shocked when listening to the interview the first time - it sounds as if Raghunath has a homo-erotic crush on the bearded old prof, who moreover responds that he would like to have some sheep around his house, and wonders if the devotee could help him take care of those instead?! I always assumed that humor and Krishnaism didn´t exactly mix, but clearly there are exceptions...

Bryant discusses both Patanjali´s yoga, the karma yoga of the Bhagavad Gita, and the more crazy forms of bhakti yoga typical of the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition. He does see some value in "classical" yoga, since it can help people to calm their minds and make them receptive to higher realities. Ultimately, however, Patanjali´s yoga cannot reach ultimate reality, which Bryant identifies with Ishvara, a personal god with form (specifically Krishna). In classical yoga, meditative concentration on Ishvara is just a stepping stone to the experience of Brahman or "Mind thinking about Mind". To a Vaishnava, this is absurd - humans simply aren´t "divine" in *this* sense, the correct philosophy being dualism between God and the human soul. There must be something "trans-rational" beyond the cosmos, otherwise God could be grasped with human reason. While a general god-concept can be established by reason, special revelation is needed to know God´s real nature. And such a revelation will strike many humans as borderline irrational. To Bryant, the tenth canto of Shrimad Bhagavatam is God´s revelation per excellence, especially the charming passages of how Krishna as a small child stole butter, urinated in the gopi´s house, and played other pranks on people. Yes, that´s how God (somehow) really looks like!

Bryant drops a few interesting pieces of information here and there in the interview. Apparently, the founders of modern yoga (including Iyengar Yoga) were actually Vaishnava devotionalists, but played down this aspect when talking to Westerners. Their favorite scripture was the Vishnu Purana, which Bryant believes comes across as a shorter version of the Shrimad Bhagavatam (also called Bhagavata Purana). Bryant also briefly discusses the aesthetic aspect of Vaishnava philosophy. God isn´t just omnipotent and so on, but also omni-beautiful. Beauty necessitates form, but form can be infinite according to the (dualist) Vedantists. I nevertheless get the impression that this beauty-aspect is one of the reasons why Krishna is revealed as a "limited" beautiful human. Finally, Bryant points out that real bhakti is really a mind state. God manifests in the human mind. (The implication being that just worshipping some idol isn´t necessarily bhakti.) This raises the question whether there is some form of yogic practice that can be used to experience Krishna as Ishvara...

Interesting clip, all in all.